The Roof
Alain’s Modelo spilled
foamy tear ran striated
navy matte roof grit
mystery machine, pop
white tear singularity
froth, trickle,windshield
crack one open –
slip the hood, down
the horizon, fire, illegal
Mexican gunpowder
(dontcha know Chinese invented)
mottled downtown Los Angeles.
Every flash in the pre-night gloaming,
an argument won, twixt
pre-adolescence, fathers all
every minor explosion
a tiny, grateful insurrection.
just north of K-Town
the village of Larchmont
teams with privileged smiles
hot asphalt, cold concrete
a boy takes me walking
talking about how the world
is alternate, elemental, now,
how everyone thinks pink
but the mean boys drive by
just south of the village a
quiet street the car slows
down to show the widow
walking, one, not two dogs
chestnuts is a dummy, a
straw man might tell you to stop.
maybe you stop and watch her
in your mirror, like a creepo
and a mean boy drives by.
in the mountain cabin we
cackle at the poet and the
pie bears and the quiet sad
fir trees – lunacy by the studio
down the mountain music blaring,
gossiping, chain smoking and stoking
hearth cherries fire arc out the window
her body, an open revolt, an uncivil war
and the mean girls drive by
